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LONDON, Ont. -- The lawsuits and political furor have already begun over the diluted doses of chemotherapy drugs delivered to hundreds of Canadian cancer patients over the past year.

The intravenous bags of two chemotherapy drugs and saline solution were prepared by Hamilton-based Marchese Health Care.

"It's a very worrisome situation...and we will work to find out how this happened," Premier Kathleen Wynne said Wednesday.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said the botched treatment has generated fear in patients and raises all kinds of questions questions about how health ministry officials are handling the situation.

Siskinds, a London law firm with a special team handling medical class-action suits, announced Wednesday it's launching a lawsuit against Marchese in partnership with a Windsor firm.

"It's hard enough to be going through chemotherapy treatments, but obviously this is causing a lot of stress that these people don't need," Siskinds lawyer Matthew Baer said.

The diluted chemotherapy solutions were used to treat a total of 1,176 patients at hospitals in London, Windsor, Oshawa, Peterborough and Saint John, New Brunswick.

Neil Johnson, vice-president of cancer care at the London Health Sciences Centre, said the problem was caused be a labelling error on the two commonly used chemotherapy drugs. Cyclophosphamide is used in combination with other drugs to fight breast, lung, lymphoma and leukemia; and gemcitabine is used for bladder, pancreas, lung and breast cancers.

Marita Zaffiro, chief executive of Marchese Health Care, issued a statement saying it had met all contract requirements and denying the chemotherapy solutions were "defective."

But Zaffiro's statement also refers to a systemic problem.

"We need to understand how assumptions about product use, which were not consistent with the contractually supplied preparation and labelling, led to this issue."